Is a Decor Homage to Your Wife the Ultimate Rich Guy Flex?

Photos: Getty Images, Alamy Stock Photo. Photo Illustration: Lizzie Soufleris

Whether it’s building business empires or their personal compounds, the 1% likes to take things to another level. Ordinary wife guys can post photos of their partners to Instagram and call it a day, but married moguls have the means to go beyond social media posts in favor of commissioning blue-chip art of their beloveds (which they maybe then post about anyway). In August, Mark Zuckerberg shared an Instagram post of his wife, Priscilla Chan, sipping her morning coffee beside a seven-foot-tall sculpture of herself by contemporary artist Daniel Arsham. The scene in a Social Network sequel practically writes itself: “A photo of your wife isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A giant sculpture of your wife.”

The Meta founder isn’t the only CEO to have their spouse immortalized by a famed artist. “Historically, wealthy people have commissioned portraits or, more rarely, sculptures of themselves to gain status and, of course, to immortalize themselves,” says Olav Velthuis, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam, explaining that the custom has become rarer with the advent of photography. Industrialist and art collector Peter Brant commissioned Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan to craft a portrait of his wife, supermodel Stephanie Seymour. The resulting work—titled Stephanie (2003), but better known as “Trophy Wife”—depicts Seymour sans clothes (and legs) as a ship figurehead. “We thought it was an interesting idea,” Brant told AD in 2020.

Last year, Jeff Bezos’s summer of superyacht fun (aboard a $500 million luxury vessel dubbed Koru) became the object of tabloid obsession for perceived similarities between the ship’s wooden figurehead and Bezos’s fiancée, Lauren Sánchez—or, as the Daily Mail so tamely put it, “Curvaceous winged GODDESS on Jeff Bezos’s 416-footer bears striking resemblance to none other than…Ms. Sanchez!” Sánchez herself later told Vogue that the sculpture is actually of Freyja, the Norse goddess of love—and implied that if it were of her, it would sport larger breasts.

While Bezos’s decorative decision was perhaps not intentionally a nod to his partner, Zuckerberg’s was direct. Besides love and affection for his wife, the tech tycoon seems to have been inspired by history. “Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife,” he wrote in the post’s caption. However, sources tell us, Zuck is not exactly doing as the Romans did. “It is a bit misleading to say the Romans made sculptures of their wives,” says Dr. Glenys Davies, honorary fellow in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. “Some may have done, but there is little evidence of it being a common practice.”

According to Davies, sculptures of Roman women were generally honorific or funerary and were usually displayed alongside likenesses representing their husbands or extended family. “Honorific statues were usually commissioned to honor the woman for her patronage of city buildings and amenities. Although a husband might have influenced the decision, it was the town council who commissioned the statue,” Davies says.

Zuckerberg may not be bringing back a Roman spousal tradition, per se, but rather a Roman imperial one. “It’s not really a Roman tradition to make a statue of your wife [as a romantic gesture],” says Emma Southon, PhD, a Roman historian who hosts the History is Sexy podcast and is the author of A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women. “Roman emperors [would] make a statue of a living woman and then put it out in public as a sign of the importance of your family, of your dynasty, of the values that you think that you embody as part of your imperial propaganda,” she says.

Imperial sculptures of women were idealized and frequently associated their subjects with goddesses. (So the love goddess’s likeness in Bezos figurehead actually does follow some tradition.) “When Augustus is commissioning portraiture of his wife, Livia, she always fits into his idea of what a woman should be,” Dr. Southon says. “So she’s always very demure, very young looking, very naturalistic, and she’s embodying ideas of peace and what’s called ‘concordia,’ which is like marital harmony, basically.”

Southon notes that the sculpture is just one example of Zuckerberg’s “obsession” with Roman history. He and Chan gave their three children Roman names, and to announce Meta’s AI, he wore a T-shirt with a quote from the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, an inscription recounting the accomplishments of Emperor Augustus that translates to “At the age of 19, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army.”

Though the piece may be polarizing, it seems to have pleased its most important viewer—the subject herself. Perhaps the move is more of a modern nouveau rich flex than a romantic long-standing Roman tradition, but one question remains: Does Zuckerberg have a plan in place to top this decorative dedication next Valentine’s Day? Watch this space.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest